Standing in a field just outside the walls of the graveyard at Mainham, County Kildare, this is the Browne Mausoleum dating from 1743. The man responsible for commissioning the work, Stephen Fitzwilliam Browne of Castle Browne (today Clongowes Wood College), had wanted the building to stand within the graveyard but the local rector wanted to charge him five guineas for the privilege, perhaps because Browne was a Roman Catholic. Refusing to pay, he latter opted to build the mausoleum on his own land instead; a stone slab over the entrance tells the story, the rector described as ‘the only clergyman in the diocese whose passion would prevent their church to be embellished or enlarged, and to deprive themselves and their successors from the burial fees; and he has been the occasion of obliging said Browne to erect said monument here on his own estate of inheritance, which said Browne thinks proper to insert here to show it was not by choice he did it. May the 1st 1743.’
Inside, the mausoleum holds a stone altar with the figures of Browne and his wife in relief, kneeling on either side of the crucified Christ, with the wall above embellished in stucco with fluted pilasters and a frieze of seraphim. On the north wall is an earlier monument to Thomas Browne (died 1693) featuring a seraphim at its base, a coat of arms and heraldic medallions above a lengthy inscription and on top a large urn flanked by skulls.

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